45 Minutes With Miyamoto

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The iconic designer tells us how 3DS breathes new life into old games, and discusses Nintendo's plans for online services, user-created content and more.

By Cam Shea & Patch Kolan

You've already seen Shigeru Miyamoto's responses to your questions from E3, but that was only part of the interview. Here's the transcript of the rest, covering 3DS, Skyward Sword, online services, user-created content, getting games green lit within Nintendo and much more.

IGN AU: How long has the 3DS been in development? What's the process behind the scenes?

Shigeru Miyamoto: Basically the way it works is – once we've finalised the design for a new hardware system and we've launched the hardware system, the hardware teams immediately begin research on what the next system will be. So it's been – I don't know how long – I guess about six years since we launched Nintendo DS, so they've been researching and experimenting with various things over the last six years, but it really finally started to take this shape that we see now about three years ago.

IGN AU: Nintendo has experimented with 3D systems in the past. Why is the time now ripe for this?

Shigeru Miyamoto: Well, there were kind of two things that led to it. First of all, the LCD screen technology has really advanced quite a bit over the last few years, and that played a big part in it. The other is obviously – as you pointed out – we've experimented with 3D a lot over the years, and in all the experiments that we did, with the sole exception of the Virtual Boy, everything else that we worked on was really 3D as a peripheral or an accessory to an existing hardware system. And what's unique about a portable gaming device is that because it's both a gaming system and a monitor, both together in one device, there is no accessory. What that means is everybody who purchases the device is able to experience the 3D effect, so it was kind of this combination of us focusing in on the idea of a portable device as a 3D device, and the fact that the LCD screen technology had advanced to a point where it was finally going to be possible to do it.

IGN AU: The DS gave developers a set of tools to work with – dual screen, touch screen, microphone and so on, that forced them to come up with new ideas and give us new experiences. The 3DS adds in a three dimensional display, obviously, as well as gyroscopic control, infrared etc., do you think this will lead to even newer concepts?

Shigeru Miyamoto: Well yeah, of course the Nintendo DS interface was very fresh when we first introduced it, and it led to a lot of different ideas working their way into videogames, including something as diverse as basically taking book-like style control or viewpoints and implementing that into games. What's interesting about Nintendo 3DS is it does have additional input features, but it's also a system that's particularly suited to taking past gameplay experiences, or the more standard gameplay experience, and bringing it this new, fresh feel with the 3D screen. So I think what's interesting about it is we'll see both sides of that. We'll see the evolving of videogames as we've seen them up until now, and we'll also see things that take advantage of the new input.

The 3DS will breath new life into old games.

What's interesting with – particularly the gyro – is that obviously because of the 3D screen you have a particular sweet spot for where you can see the 3D effect, so most people would think that putting a gyro that would encourage people to tilt the device would ultimately just result in the 3D effect being lost, because you're tilting it away from you at a different angle, but what's interesting is that with the gyro you can hold the device in front of you, and do these lateral movements in space like this [moves hands together left and right] and the gyro can detect that, and I think that'll allow for some pretty interesting gameplay mechanics.

IGN AU: When the Wii was launched, the idea of Miis and avatars was very new, and we're already seeing Mii games on the 3DS, is there going to be a way to transition your Mii from the Wii to the 3DS, and is it important to have that a persistent Mii identity across both systems?

Shigeru Miyamoto: We need to keep in mind how we evolve the Miis and how we think about compatibility with Miis between different systems, but that's something that we're definitely giving consideration to and want to continue to try to allow people to use their Miis on different Nintendo systems going forward.

IGN AU: How straightforward is it for developers to incorporate 3D into their games? Obviously they'll be creatively inspired, but are the toolsets straightforward to use? How are they finding it?

Shigeru Miyamoto: It's actually not that much work to take the visuals of a game and implement them in a way that allows them to be shown in 3D. A lot of companies have done that in other attempts up until now as well, so it's not that rare for companies to look at how they do that. It's not very difficult. And in terms of the libraries themselves we've obviously been working on a variety of different libraries and sharing those with developers. They've been welcoming that, and we've obviously seen some things here at the show taking advantage of it.

IGN AU: Is there a concern, then, that many developers might take the lazy way out and simply port PS2, Wii games and just make them 3D to get them into the market quickly? And will that tarnish the 3DS' library?

Shigeru Miyamoto: I think that, depending on the title, there are certain titles from the past that when accompanied with 3D visuals it really can change the feel of the gameplay, and so from that perspective I think that a lot of companies will be looking at what properties they have so that they may be able to take advantage of that, and even we're looking at that as well, in terms of games like The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time 3D or Star Fox 64.

IGN AU: Those are great, we're more concerned about the quick rush-jobs.

Shigeru Miyamoto: I think we just have to rely on the integrity of the developers and the products that they're making. At the same time, we do think that there will be new ideas, particularly what we're finding is that with some of the lead developers at key publishing partners, people like Mr Kojima from Konami and Mr Inafune from Capcom. These are individuals who are themselves very excited about developing for the system and are talking about leading development with their main teams, so I do expect that there's going to be a lot of new content and new ideas coming out of them.

It's all about developer integrity. Still, it might not be a bad idea to bring the Nintendo Seal back...

IGN AU: The 3DS' power seems to exceed that of the Wii in some ways graphically, and it also incorporates the gyroscopes and the motion control. In that way, it's almost like having a Wii in your hand. From a business standpoint, do you see it as a threat, or do you see it causing a tapering off of Wii sales inadvertently, by introducing this new handheld?

Shigeru Miyamoto: We're not really worried about it, and primarily it's because the types of things, the types of play that you can do on a portable device is pretty different from the types of things you're able to do on a home console, and so it doesn't really concern us. I guess from a graphical standpoint it is true that the shaders that we've implemented into the Nintendo 3DS hardware, from a certain perspective, it can appear as if the graphics are stronger, but they're really a little bit more in balance I think.